Sweet smell of success

You can't divorce your wife for farting - it 'doesn't look good on your resume'. So Buck Weimer looked for more practical solutions - and his filter system for underpants won him the IgNobel prize, writes Donald MacLeod.

From the invention of anti-flatulence underwear to the tragic death of a sparrow at the hands of an infuriated domino-toppling enthusiast - the IgNobel prizes continue to throw up superbly improbable research.

This week a cluster of IgNobel laureates are touring the UK and, in the words of improbable impresario Marc Abrahams, are making people laugh and then making them think.

An earthy theme runs through much of this rarified academic research - from the discovery that herrings communicate by farting to one of this year's tour stars, Pek van Andel, who took the first MRI pictures taken of a couple's sexual organs while those organs were in use.

But they share the sort of curiosity and inventiveness - not to mention manic persistence - that prompted Buck Weimer, a retired Colorado psychologist, to design fart-proof underpants for his wife Arlene. She suffers from Crohn's disease, which causes bad-smelling gas. "You're lying in bed with your wife and suffering but you don't want to divorce a lady for body gas - it doesn't look good on your resume; - so you start looking for solutions," says Weimer.

His early prototypes of airtight underpants with a filter at the back failed miserably, he admits. A breakthrough came when he was counselling a group of coalminers after a mine accident and they described rescuers going in with gas marks.

The filtration system that Weimer eventually perfected and patented (the most harrowing part of the whole process was the government bureaucracy, he comments) had its origins in charcoal gas mask filters.

Once he found a design that worked, his wife's work and social life was freed from a lot of stress and everyone in her bowel disease support group wanted a pair. Buck and Arlene Weimer now sell their Under-ease anti-flatulence underwear - "revolutionary new underwear for offensive gas" - online. Buyers range from those with a medical problem to those who want a pair for the boss as a gag.

He was delighted to receive the IgNobel prize for biology in 2001. "Our experience is that when people first hear about it they have a huge giggle and then they reckon maybe it has some merit," says Weimer.

His wife got a bit nervous the night before they went public in their local newspaper, he says, but has been heartened by the positive feedback from around the world.

Weimer can't make this year's IgNobel tour but Kees Moeliker, the Dutch biologist who leapt to fame with the first description of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, will be there to report on his latest project. It is the preservation in the Rotterdam natural history museum of the sparrow shot after it had knocked over 24,000 dominoes lined up for a world-record toppling attempt.

Later this week Moeliker will visit Lord's cricket ground to view the corpse of the sparrow killed by a cricket ball in 1936. The research continues.